Hi and welcome to my blog. I really think parents need to lighten up; I mean, if parenting was meant to be a serious endeavor they'd offer classes! Oh, wait....
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Thursday, January 5, 2012

Writer's Workshop: Don't F&%$ with me, B%&#@!


Prompt 1.) Tell us about something you punched.

     Junior High holds no fond memories for me. I mean I guess there were a few.... I did dance with that cute boy at the winter dance that one time and then there was that... hmm... that might have summed up all of my fond memories from junior high.
     Oh wait! There was that one time, I punched that popular upperclassman in the girls bathroom because she accused me of making out with her
boyfriend--which I totally did.  I took her out with ONE punch to the face. (She sported a black eye for a few days) Yeah... that was a good day.... I was a total bad ass!

I'm not saying there wasn't
reason to pick on me.
I mean, really? Even I wanna
make this girl cry.
     I don't know how many of my readers from my hometown will remember this incident. I will tell you that it was a real turning point in my life. Pre-punch I was picked on to varying degrees of  viciousness. Everything from being called fat, four-eyes and brace face to being ignored and excluded. The typical. It really wasn't as bad as some but to a sixth grade girl it was the end of the world. So by the beginning of my seventh grade year I was miserable, not only was I at the bottom rung of the social ladder but seventh graders were now mixed in with the eighth and ninth graders so that ladder got a lot taller.
     So in the days leading up to the "incident" there was nothing in my normal day-to-day that would foreshadow the change that was coming. I went to class and tried to keep my head down and fly under the radar. I had heard that one of the Freshman's older brother was having a party over the weekend and that a few of the popular kids from the lower grades had secured invites. I, of course, wasn't on the list. By the time Friday rolled around I was kinda at the end of my patience with the "typical junior high crap". The name calling and general obliviousness of my existence had gotten to me. I decided I was going to do something about it.
     I crashed the party. For those of you not from the rural mid-west, those field parties that you see in the country music videos aren't exactly realistic. Shocker, right? From my experience, a field party consisted of a handful (or thirty) of kids, a couple coolers of beer that was stolen from parents or purchased by older siblings and a couple of trucks with shitty, overpriced sound systems. Everyone mills around, something is lit on fire, a fight breaks out and everyone gets run off by the cops within a couple of hours. WHOOP! PARTAY!
     Well, this party was no different. Except... there was this guy. I've known him for years. He was a lot older than me (like FOUR years). We were in 4-H together and he was always nice to me, if not a little patronizing. Ya know, kinda like how a big brother acts to a favorite sister--except he wasn't my brother and he was sorta...hot. Anyway, that night he'd had a few beers and wasn't acting quite so "big brother-ish". I knew he had a girlfriend but they were always fighting and always on-again, off-again and currently they were OFF-again. I decided it was her loss.
     Come Monday morning everyone was talking about what I had done. Simone* was pissed! There was talk that she was calling me out. She was going to kick my ass. By Friday bets had been placed and a date and time for this throw down had been selected. Unfortunately for Simone her mouth wrote a check her body couldn't cash. She popped off at me in the girl's bathroom and I decided that I wasn't waiting to settle this. Out of nowhere I threw a right hook to her right eye that sent her sprawling. Blood trickled from her nose onto her butter yellow Outback Red shirt. Her two friends, who until this point had been cheering her on, looked at each other and ran out of the bathroom. Simone got up slowly, leaning against the tile wall for support, her white Keds sneakers squeeking on the floor; she glanced furtively at me and quickly brushed past me and out the door. She ran directly to the nurses office and said that she fell. Her parents came and picked her up a few minutes later.
     No one saw Simone all weekend and when she came back to school on Monday she was sporting a make-up encrusted black eye. The gossip flew furiously and I waited to be called into the Principal's office. But the call never came and eventually the gossip died down. I wasn't picked on as much after that. The name calling ceased. I never heard a single murmur after that day and it was as if I--all of a sudden, materialized before every one's eyes! People who ignored me before would talk to me. I wasn't the most popular kid in the school but I was no longer a leper. Who knew that one punch could change everything?


Epilogue

Dear friends,
     I have a confession that is more than 25 years late. The incident above never happened. The only part of the entire scenario that's true is that I was in the bathroom with Simone before she headed to the nurse's office that day. It might surprise some of my friends who "remember" this incident to know that I never hit Simone. I don't know how she got the black eye, I never made out with her boyfriend, I didn't go to the party and I don't even know how the rumor got started! I don't know why Simone didn't deny the rumor, because she never did. I know why I never told the truth! My life changed with that rumor-- for the better.
     So I'm not a bad ass. I'm not sure that anyone really thought that I was, maybe they just realized that I couldn't be pushed around forever. As for me that rumor allowed me the freedom to be myself and I think that extra confidence was all I needed. Who knew that a punch I never threw would change my life so much?

Peace Out!
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*Names have been changed to protect the innocent. As it stands there were no "innocents" we were all a bunch of liars but I still live in the same town as "Simone" and I don't want her to get pissed and kick my ass. Although I still think I could take her....
And as always (on Thursdays) this post was inspired by Mama Kat's Pretty Much World Famous Writing Workshop.

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